GOP leaders can only afford to lose two votes, giving them little room for error.

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The most notable sign of their strategy on Thursday was a willingness to scrap cutting the capital gains tax rate on wealthy individuals and families from 23.8 percent to 20 percent, according to several GOP senators.

GOP leaders would use the savings to provide more money for low-income Americans who might not be able to afford health insurance — a goal of centrist Republican opponents of the healthcare bill.

“That’s going to be an important part of this,” said Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. “What it represents is a devolution of power and money from Washington back to the states. So the states are going to have a lot of resources and a lot of flexibility."

McConnell’s new goal is to get a deal by Friday that would allow the Congressional Budget Office to produced a new score over the recess. The Senate might then vote for the legislation when it returns from recess.

Some Republican senators are worried the bill as currently drafted could become a millstone around the party’s neck, sinking it in future elections.

“Just because we made a promise doesn’t mean we have to pass a bad product,” he warned colleagues, according to one source who attended the private meeting.

Another source recalled Graham warning that colleagues shouldn’t pass an “unpopular” bill, arguing if the rationale is to fulfill a political promise, colleagues should think about whether the outcome is politically intelligent.

A new NPR-PBS Newshour-Marist poll released Wednesday showed that only 1 in 5 people approve of the Senate bill and only 35 percent of Republicans like it.

In another nod to centrists, Republicans are talking about using the House formula for indexing the growth of Medicaid, which would make the bill more expensive but lower cuts to the program.

Moderates have pointed out that the change would only add $12 billion to the bill’s costs.

But changing the formula would risk the support of Toomey, who has led the charge to curb Medicaid’s future growth.

Centrists are also pushing for a longer glide path for phasing out federal dollars that allowed 31 states to expand Medicaid.

The current draft would begin to scale down the federal portion beginning in 2021 and spread the phaseout over three years. Moderates want a five-year phaseout instead.

An additional 14 million people have signed up for Medicaid under Obama’s expanded guidelines.

They met with GOP leaders and the Senate parliamentarian on Thursday morning to discuss whether the change would be allowed under Senate rules.

One Senate aide said Cruz is telling colleague that “pre-existing conditions is my line in the sand,” threatening to sink the bill if it doesn’t repeal a regulation requiring companies to sell affordable health insurance to people regardless of their health conditions.

But there are serious policy concerns among much of the rest of the conference, which is worried that the change would mean insurers could sell plans without protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

McConnell told Republican senators at a private meeting earlier this month that he would “not touch pre-existing conditions” in the bill, the GOP aide noted.

Cruz did not raise a serious objection when the conference was informed of that leadership position, according to the aide.

Many Republican lawmakers are concerned that healthy people would flock to the cheaper plans without ObamaCare protections, while only sicker people would be left in the plans that remained under the ObamaCare regulations, driving up costs among that pool of people.

Thune said Cruz’s change “could” be included, but “it has to be structured in a way that ensures that the pools aren't adversely affected.”